Reviews

Dry humour, entertaining situations with occasional fluff, and vibrantly expressive animation all combine to make a highly entertaining meta-parody on romcoms and dating-sims.

Being ace myself, I was especially interested in the series' premise. I was pleased to find out that the protagonist is likeable (whose voice actress has impeccable comedic timing), and that the show lives up to its premise without falling into overdone "fanservice" clichés that anime is infamous for.

The last three episodes shifted in tone rather abruptly, from a previously comedic setup to a quite tense dramatic one. Nevertheless, I found these well executed. My only big annoyance comes from the final episode's lack of commitment: instead of having a satisfying answer to "will she, won't she", we conclude with the status quo unchanged and a teaser for a (possible) second season.

At times the story is muddled, and there are moments (especially in the final episode) where one feels like the writers wanted to write a much darker story than they ended up with - perhaps studio executives forbade too much grimness.

Still, this show deserves a grand applause for 100% being invested in itself: it is over the top, campy, and sometimes flat-out bizarre, and the show owns it. Too many other movies and shows use lampshading and self-aware quips as if they're afraid of alienating their audience, but that just shows they're afraid of taking themselves seriously. In contrast, Centaur World goes all-out.

The musical numbers are nice, the characters are memorable and sympathetic, the storyline is concise and the episodes are well-written (without being formulaic), and the switches between comedic moments and dramatic scenes feel natural.

All in all it's comparably a great thriller. Some of the cinematography and editing was a little stiff; the ending while climactic wasn't completely satisfying. But that's just nitpicking over details. Compared to almost every other movie in the crime thriller genre this is still a good and thrilling movie.

Great acting, nice bleak scenery and beautiful costumes. The iconic lapis blue dress which Macbeth wears combined with the subtle lighting gives the interior scenes a Vermeer-like quality. The beholder starts to root for "Lady Macbeth" as she tentatively grabs hold of small freedoms, and becomes increasingly horrified at her as the increasingly oprressive atmosphere forces her to do horrible things. A superbly produced yet horrifying film, so know what you're getting yourself into.

This movie with its brightly hued technicolor aesthetic and plethora of musical tropes and sometimes slightly offensive gay stereotypes has clearly drawn inspiration from a handful of other classics, such as Funny Face and Singin' In The Rain and the lgbt+ classics Victor, Victoria (1982) and Priscilla Queen of the Desert and most obviously Love Simon (2018). However despite all of this inspiration the movie has almost no redemptive qualities of its own.

The plot is meandering, boring and wire-thin. Except for J. E. Pellman's performance as Emma all of the characters are flat and annoying and have about the depth of a Disney Channel movie.

The visuals are seemingly intentionally campy, but instead of this producing a pleasing easy-going atmosphere it just looks screechingly bad on purpose. Almost all of the songs are loud and end up sounding the same.

In conclusion: there are better lgbt+ themed movies to spend your time on.

Living in an ordinary town in Scotland, the dreams and ambitions of Anna and her friends are uprooted by the zombie-virus-caused sudden collapse of civilization. In typical teenage fashion, they cope with societal collapse through memes and nihilistic humour.

What I loved about this movie is the way they managed to convincingly capture the teenage mentality. In typical teenage fashion we see them have fun, go through painful social interactions, and react to everything with an impulsiveness we now call "chaotic neutral" in memes. The movie did a good job of combining different atmospheres, genres and sugary sweet pop-songs in an amalgation which worked surprisingly well.

However, after the second half of the movie I felt myself get a little bored as the movie seemed to run out of ideas and turned more serious. Still, it was an uplifting and entertaining movie and I wouldn't be surprised if this will become one of those films that become cult classics and join the ranks of Heathers and The Breakfast Club.

The first time I saw Madama Butterfly was early August 2020, as a 2017 performance at the Royal Opera House. I loved the music so much I decided to watch this version as well. This movie has taken a realist approach to depicting the story by Asian singers for the Asian roles. This choice was slightly at the cost of operatic quality, but if for the sake for top-notch voices the cast had been whitewashed and replaced by singers twice as old, I would have skipped it. This is a movie, not a live performance.

Ying Huang (Cio-cio-san/Butterfly) played the affection-starved yet goodhearted woman beautifully, if not a little stiffly at times. Richard Troxell (Pinkerton, the American naval officer) played the entitled "playboy" so convincingly I had the urge to slap him through the screen. Jingma Fan (Goro) played the marriage broker; in this version he's not only oppertunistic but also slightly malicious which was surprising but Fan played it well.

The visuals in this movie were unexpectedly beautiful. Instead of depicting the bustling harbour city of Nagasaki they chose a more rural setting with thatched houses; as it was shot in Tunisia the village is dotted with olive trees rather than pine trees. This was probably done for economic reasons, yet it never feels fake: the houses look real and lively, the gardens are lined with flowers, people are fishing for mussels in the surf. The costumes and interiors were pretty as well.

However, I think the director took too many artistic liberties. By inserting flashbacks and flash-forwards and making it appear as if days or even weeks pass between different events he interrupted the pacing of the music. He also left out about 10 minutes of music at the beginning of Act 3 ("Oh Eh ! Oh Eh !") The cinematography was pretty during shots of landscapes and outside scenes, but during interior scenes the mostly static shots tended to make the rooms look cramped.

Despite good singers and beautiful set design, its shortcomings on both the cinematic and operatic side make this film fall short of being great. However, it is still good and I can recommend this to everyone.

In early August I saw this opera for the first time as a 2017 performance at the Royal Opera House, and I loved the music so much I decided to watch this version as well. What makes this movie stand out is the decision to cast Asian actors and actresses for the Asian roles.

Ying Huang (Cio-cio-san/Butterfly) played the affection-starved yet goodhearted woman beautifully. Richard Troxell (Pinkerton, the American naval officer) played the entitled "playboy" so convincingly I had the urge to slap him through the screen. Jingma Fan (Goro) played the marriage broker; in this version he's not only oppertunistic but also slightly malicious which was surprising but Fan played it well.

The visuals in this movie were unexpectedly beautiful. Instead of depicting the bustling harbour city of Nagasaki they chose a more rural setting with thatched houses; as it was shot "on location" in Tunisia the village is dotted with olive trees rather than pine trees. This was probably done for economic reasons, yet it doesn't feel fake for a moment: the houses look real and lively, the gardens are lined with flowers, people are fishing for mussels in the surf. The costumes and interiors were pretty as well. The cinematography was a bit clunky at times (especially in Act 3) which admittedly bothered me more than it should have.

However, I feel the director took too many artistic liberties. By inserting flashbacks and flash-forwards and making it appear as if days or even months pass between different musical pieces he interrupted the pacing of the music. He also left out a good 10 minutes of music at the beginning of Act 3 ("Oh Eh ! Oh Eh !")

Despite some flaws on the director's part, this still makes for a good movie with good casting, beautiful casting and beautiful visuals. I can recommend this movie to everyone, even the people who don't like opera.

The series took a while for me to warm up to, as the first few episodes seemed shallow both in the storyline and its characters. However, Violet's cool and soldier-like facade begins to fall away as she learns more about other people and her own emotions. I found myself rooting for her as she learns more about herself: the first time she genuinely smiled I was touched, the first time she genuinely cried I almost cried myself. The story continues to a heartbreaking reveal for Violet, and the sadness and guilt she tries to dissapate in the following episodes made me cry myself. The story isn't very fleshed out or deep; it has some plot holes here and there. But it's a touching story all the same and I can recommend it to anyone reading this.

Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto-Memory Doll starts out nicely, with crisp animation and our titular character arriving at a ladies' school to become a girl's personal teacher and handmaiden.

As they spend time with each other, they become close and open up to each other. This is very sweet, and I genuinely liked this part, but I also felt they threw Violet's character growth from the series out of the window by making her stiff all over again.

What I also didn't like was the weak storyline. It doesn't feel like one cohesive plot, rather it feels like three separate episodes played back-to-back for 1,5 hours. The movie starts out strongly with Violet and Isabella gradually warming up to each other, but after the debutante ball Isabella had been trained for (about 40 minutes in) the movie begins to lose its pacing and storyline quality. The story's pacing slows to a near halt as we are expected to love a newly introduced character who keeps sticking around. I found myself becoming truly bored with this film until it was suddenly over.

All in all, I don't think this is worth watching.

A muse descends to Earth and inspires a struggling artist to... give up on his dream of being an artist and open a nightclub? Is that what muses do?

If you're going to watch this movie you've probably heard this movie was bad. I'm here to tell you this is true, but it's also such fun. Except for the soundtrack and the performances by Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly, Xanadu is a bad movie by most degrees. This movie with a strange but otherwise straightforward story takes some weird turns with its strange editing, clunky cinematography and bad acting (!) but most of this is just funny to watch. Enter with low expectations, laugh at the stone-faced acting and the trippy special effects, and enjoy the music!

This could have been good. The story premise was good, the cinematography was decent, and the cast was alright (Cate Blanchett was stellar in her performance). But I don't think this is a good movie. A combination of stiff and unnatural dialogue, an overload of misery functioning solely as shock value, and a portrayal of mental illness that is frankly offensive in its sensationalizing make this movie unworthwhile. Not even Cate Blanchett could save this one.

The premise of the story was very original, the story itself was enjoyable, the main and side characters were likable (sometimes corny, but in a fun way), the music was thrilling, and the way said music was incorporated into the episodes was just genius in pacing and timing. I liked how emotional vulnerability was handled in the show, and also how they didn't shy away from making one of the main characters explicitly gay (which can be quite something for a children's show). I'm even tempted to say this show is almost as good as Avatar: The Last Airbender in terms of originality and general enjoyability, which is something I don't say often. I loved once again seeing a main character who tries to always be kind and do good, someone I can relate to, instead of the usual snarky "nice" main characters you so often see onscreen. For honesty's sake, what makes it not completely as good as ATLA though, is the story isn't *that* deep and sometimes Kipo was a little too perfect and nice. But that's not always a bad thing. Not every show has to be like Last Airbender, and sometimes you just want to watch a cute and innocent show about kindness and bravery, without going into the moral philosophy of it all.

All in all, Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts is an enjoyable and bingeable show which I can recommend to everyone.

Despite its appealing character+set design and impressively high animation quality, the first two seasons suffer from a lot of stiff dialogue and some poor voice acting that makes the series difficult to enjoy without cringing at it somewhat. I also felt the pacing was tediously slow: I like slow pacing in movies, but the three main characters spending three episodes in the same basement was just ridiculous. Despite opposing some parts of Catholicism myself, I also got bored by the "evil Christian leaders are evil" trope which was constantly played. The third season, however, turned out to be much better and more enjoyable. The third season was a bit more humorous, had more action scenes, and created more well-rounded and satisfying character arcs for the side characters Hector and Isaac. The pacing was still as slow as before, though.

The movie was pretty to look at, and the characters were likable. Yet this movie has been bashed (perhaps rightly so) for diverging greatly from the books it was based on, and changing much of what made the Earthsea series stand out such as having dark-skinned characters and careful discussion about good and evil.

Yet, this movie was not as bad as some people claim it to be. It's quite an impressing debut for Goro Miyazaki, considering this is his first film to direct. The way it diverges from the books it's based on could have been handled better: the story becomes messy after about 30 minutes in. Yet, throughout the film, the attention to detail and the film's strong opening shows that Goro most certainly knew his books; I suspect the blunder lies in having started producing without having prepared a screenplay beforehand.

The series is alright. I'm not a bible scholar, but as far as I know the series has done a decent job in portraying different religions (and their different views on a messiah) accurately and respectfully, and doesn't favor one over the other. And don't get me wrong, I'm actually pleased they managed to do that so well. However, I felt like that was the only trick this series has up its sleeve. Many of the supporting main characters are really clichéd and bland, and in some strange attempt at depicting people in the Levant realistically they constantly have the characters switch between English and Hebrew/Arabic/etc... You get the point. They could have just picked one language for each scene and stuck with it; this constant language switching was only more distracting than it was "accurate". Also, I felt like the story itself was just very bland. That's all I have to say about it.

The Legend of Korra takes place roughly seventy years after the end of Last Airbender and follows the new Avatar as she struggles with retaining balance in an industrialised society and all its new problems. ATLA had a fairly straightforward concept, namely fighting against a colonialist country in a worldwide war. This fairly basic story gained depth and nuance as the story progressed. LOK is a little more complicated, with the main antagonist of each series representing a different extremist ideology which tries to change society for the better. LOK depicts the political scene of this modern society extremely well, even if it sometimes lacks the nuance of ATLA. It doesn't shy back to depict poverty or violence, or the chaos which is caused by political coups. Another thing this series does well is its depiction of trauma which ATLA more or less glossed over. In the fourth season, a main character is strongly hinted to have PTSD, and their symptoms, behaviours and road to recovery are shown in an understandable and realistic way without painting them as monstrous or weird. Lastly, the animation quality of LOK (including the action scenes) is incredibly good. The animation quality went down considerably in most of season two, but this was likely because the series was originally meant to be only one season long and they weren't sure if additional seasons would pan out. The last few episodes of season two were perhaps the best of the entire series in terms of animation quality.

On the other hand, the series has some large flaws. Much of the story (especially in the first and second season) is focused on the main characters' angst and love triangles, which felt quite forced and took up too much of the screentime. Also, the lore and magic rules (such as how bending works or where benders learned to control the elements) which were established in ATLA, were stretched to the point of disbelief in LOK for the sake of introducing new material. Two words: "spirit vines".

(TL;DR: The series deserves praise for its animation quality, its high-paced storyline (with its action, villains and politics), its depiction of trauma and PTSD. It loses points for love triangles which feel forced at times, and the way it stretches the lore and magical rules from ATLA to fit its story.)

Visually the movie was nice, and it was fun enough to watch. The story is a little all over the place: they try to save Arendelle, they want to find out what happened to their parents, Kristoff wants to propose to Anna; and all of this at the same time. A golden rule in writing is "show, don't tell", but many of the plot twists are told instead of shown to us and sometimes things aren't explained at all...

Absolutely masterful in suspense and mystery, a great story. The casting is excellent too, both in the acting skills and how they manage to find people that look exactly like their older/younger versions. It's nice the actors look like real people, and not sort-of-models in the same vanilla beauty kind of way.

However, the more the story progresses, the more the series writes itself into a corner. (You'll know what I mean when you watch it.) The final episode of season two feels like the writers were totally out of ideas and had to come up with something outlandish to 'fix' the plothole they created themselves.

This movie could have been much better. The story falls flat and lacks structure, with a typical "humans bad, magical creatures good" narrative and forgettable villains. I think the main issue is that the movie can't make up its mind about what kind of movie it wants to be. Does it want to be a dark fantasy movie with Pirates of the Caribbean-like grimness and violence? Does it want to be a child-friendly movie with a wedding and minimal/shallow conflict? Does it want to have a developed magical world with different lands and species or does it want nearly everything to take place in the same castle? It tries to be like Cinderella, it tries to be like Pirates of the Caribbean, it tries to be like Chronicles of Narnia, with nothing of its own that makes it stand out. (except that one bird's nest cave scene, that was pretty cool.) To be fair, sometimes the cinematograhpy was absolutely stunning, such as in a bird's nest-like cave Maleficent finds herself in at some point in the movie, or certain shots of the castle and the Moors.

If you want a nice movie night with a movie that looks nice, has cool special effects and offends nobody, go for it. If you want a movie that stands out, don't watch this.

The movie is absolutely wonderful, both musically (in terms of singing and orchestrally) and visually (all of those costumes and sets, and oh! the colours and lighting!). Domingo has a wonderful voice and Migenes' voice has a personality and allure that other female opera singers lack when trying to play Carmen. However, there are some scenes that just look a little strange. Sometimes the edges of buildings and mountains are intentionally blackened out, and whether this is some strange artistic choice on behalf of the director or something else isn't clear. All of Act Two is brightly overlit, despite mostly taking place during the nighttime and under the night sky. Still, these discrepancies are easily forgiven when just looking at the costumes and stellar acting of Domingo and Migenes.

Even if you don't like anime (I don't like much anime either), you should really give this series a try. Although it's originally aimed at young children (mostly girls) it got praised in its time for being fun to both boys and girls, and still hasn't lost its appeal to audiences of all ages. Why? Because it's just such good fun, that's why.

The look and animation style of the series is very cute. Pastel colours, idyllic city landscapes and a distinctive soundtrack makes that Sailor Moon has a unique feel to it that many other anime have tried to copy. However, behind all of the pastel aesthetics, fighting-baddies-storyline, and bickering main characters, the series shows us many valuable and touching truths; such as how friends can help each other become better people, inner beauty counts more than outer beauty, and to fail and try again is always better than to have never tried at all. In this, Sailor Moon manages to be uplifting and comforting (which really helped me when I was suffering from depression). Another good thing that stood out to me is the fact that this series also has multiple gay and lesbian relationships. Some of these are implicit; others are explicit, such as the one between Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune. These are never portrayed as questionable or 'wrong', neither are these sexualised; they're simply relationships like the heterosexual relationships in the series.

However, I have to admit that the quality of the storyline and animation can vary from season to season and episode to episode. In terms of storyline quality, I think season One, Three and Five are the best, with season Two being "meh" and season Four just being ultra-childish rubbish. Some people might also consider the episodes repetitive, with the stock footage and a villain that's defeated at the end of every episode, but if you don't mind that you'll be in for a wonderful show.

This movie definitely wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. The cast's singing and acting abilities were amazing, and it was nice to hear new covers of relatively unknown ABBA songs. However, the movie's storyline is just incredibly weak. The movie *could* have been a prequel to the first "Mamma Mia!" which focuses on Donna's coming-of-age through her multiple affairs, subsequent pregnancy, and being disowned by her mother, which could have been a touching movie. Instead, this movie is only a lukewarm sequel where the characters from the last movie get together with sporadically shown flashbacks to young Donna's life. Also, I felt that most of the characters did things that were completely out of character, especially in Donna's case.

In short, this movie could have been so, so much more. Which it wasn't.